


Fear of Demons

by junko



Series: Senbonzakura's Song [42]
Category: Bleach
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Original Character(s), Past Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-27
Updated: 2014-11-27
Packaged: 2018-02-27 05:57:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2681678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/junko/pseuds/junko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Having used his safe word in Byakuya's office, Renji walks away to do some thinking...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fear of Demons

Leaving Byakuya’s office, Renji instinctively headed towards the dojo.

His whole body was a knot of unspent anger, and, if nothing else, going through some Hakuda forms would work some of it out.

 _You should let us challenge him,_ Zabimaru whispered with a hiss.

Standing at the door, Renji removed his sandals and turned them face out. “What if he just kicks our assess?”

 _So what if he does?_ The baboon king asked. _Maybe that will placate his demon._

During the lunch shift, the dojo was nearly empty. The wan winter sun, peeking through the high windows, cast the polished, formal space in a muted light. Dust motes danced in thin rays that dappled the matted flooring. 

One other soul stood off in a far corner practicing her sword form. Renji recognized her as an unseated recruit from the Fifth that he’d had to knock back a rank because, while her kidō was off the charts good, her zanjutsu was worse than Richiki’s. Renji was pleased to see she was taking her training seriously.

Even though the place was mostly empty, Renji went through the motions of bowing in. To Zabimaru, he whispered: “So I got to take a hit no matter what? You saying I should let him take us down in a fight, so I can keep that shit out of the bedroom?”

 _A fight can be therapeutic._ The baboon king said. The snake tail added, _Plus, who says we’d go down so easy?_

Renji had to think about that. On one hand it made sense, on the other… well, it was his pride, wasn’t it? 

Taking a stance, Renji went through a fairly high-level form that combined Hakuda and sword work. He’d been having trouble with the part in this one where a spin-kick came up out of a standing roll, so he figured he go over the whole thing until it felt right. Renji always admired those super-acrobatic moves the Second Division types did, but his bulky body wasn’t exactly built for finesse. 

Still, his motto was: you didn’t know what you were capable of until you tried it—and practiced it about six million times.

As he got into the punch-kick-slash rhythms, Renji considered Zabimaru’s thought. It was a good short-term solution. Byakuya had wanted to do some training together today, anyway. Maybe it would work out that if Byakuya could humiliate Renji in a fight, get him laid low at his feet, maybe they wouldn’t have to replay that scene during sex so damn much. 

But, just thinking about it brought a snarl to Renji’s lips. Plus, Byakuya would use kidō and Renji fucking hated how helpless that made him. 

Still, wasn’t it better to suffer the degradation fully clothed, with Zabimaru in hand, and going down swinging?

Yeah, it kind of was. 

But, would it solve the problem, or would Renji just end up licking Byakuya’s sandals twice? Once was fucking enough thank you anyway. But, on the other hand, Renji would totally take a public smackdown, if he could get a guarantee that would be the end of it. 

Landing funny after the kick, Renji went back to the beginning of the form to start again. 

Renji knew he needed to talk to someone who knew something about this sort of thing, but he had no idea who that might be. As his body settled into the familiar pattern of the form, Renji considered potential experts.

The first person he thought of was Matsumoto. It might not be true, but she acted like she had a lot of sexual experience in general, and she was a friend of Gin Ichimaru, in specific. She had to have some sense of how to deal with… difficult people. Not that Byakuya was anything close to what Ichimaru was, but maybe she would have some kind of advice.

But there were all kinds of problems with crying on Matsumoto’s shoulder. 

Renji and Byakuya had been thinking about going more public with their relationship, but telling Matsumoto anything you didn’t want the whole Seireitei to know seemed foolish. She was a natural gossip. It was one of her best features.

And that was the other problem, that very prominent pair of her _other_ best features distracted the hell out of Renji. He could all too easily see this conversation ending up as consolation sex. That was one rather ‘final solution’ to their issues, but if Renji wanted to break up with Byakuya, he should just cowboy up and march back into the office and tell him so.

So, even if she had good advice, Matsumoto was out.

This time the landing was technically perfect, but he still felt off balance and so ended up flubbing what should have been an easy pivot and slash. 

Sheathing Zabimaru, he went back to the beginning to start again. Taking a breath, Renji focused. He’d done this set of complex moves enough times that he was starting to sweat. The physical tiredness helped him feel more at ease with the form—he was just going through the motions, literally, with less thinking and more muscle memory.

The person Renji wished he could ask about how to deal with Byakuya’s moods was Hisana. But, then again, maybe Byakuya didn’t get weird like this with the ladies. After all, the whole thing that got him worked up today--and it seemed, always--was with the stable boy.

Renji wondered what ever happened to that guy? Was the stable boy quietly reassigned to another household or thrown back to the Rukongai? If it was the latter, he was probably dead by now. If it was option ‘A,’ maybe he could be found. But then what? Would Byakuya even want to talk to him? Would it change anything if he could?

This time through the form, Renji made the landing and got all the way to the end without a single mistake. 

A smattering of applause broke out at his finish. Renji was surprised to see he’d gathered a small crowd. He ducked his head in acknowledgment as he headed over to the sidelines. The unseated kidō expert gave Renji’s arm a little pat and said, “You inspire me, sempai. It’s good to know that there are things you struggle to master too.”

“Heh,” Renji said with an embarrassed tug on his topknot, “You kidding? Everyone knows I can’t do kidō to save my soul.”

“Yeah,” she said with a little smile, “But, sword is something you’re good at and yet you still have to practice.”

He nodded, clapping a hand on her narrow shoulder. “True. There’s always room to get better.”

Kinjo gave Renji a little elbow to the ribs and said, “Yeah, it’s easier when you start with such a low bar.”

“Oi!” Renji said, smacking the top of Kinjo’s head playfully, but hard enough to show he meant it a little. “I was having a teaching moment here!”

Over everyone’s laughter, a voice cut through, “And it was a good one, Lieutenant.”

Byakuya stood at the door of the dojo. His sudden appearance sent everyone into a scramble, as if not sure how to acknowledge him in this casual, informal setting. But, Byakuya turned his back to them all and said, “Lunch is waiting, Renji.”

Renji was about to try to come up with an excuse to skip, but his stomach made a loud sound that echoed in the dojo’s space. Kinjo snorted a laugh. The unseated had to cover her face with her sleeve. “Right. I guess I’d better go.”

#

As they walked back toward the main part of the Division, Byakuya turned his head slightly and asked over his shoulder, “Am I to understand you abruptly ended our conversation because you had a sudden urge to exercise?”

There was a light teasing in Byakuya’s tone, but Renji answered honestly. “I needed to think. That’s what ‘sakura’ means, you dope. It means, slow down I need time to work through something.” Quieter, he mumbled, “And it weren’t no ‘conversation,’ it was an argument.”

Byakuya raised a thin eyebrow and turned away again. 

“Anyways,” Renji ventured, “Maybe it was a warm-up for later.”

Byakuya came to the stairs the led up to his office, he paused long enough to give Renji another brief regard over his shoulder. “Are you planning to ambush me with sword form fifty-three?”

Renji laughed. “Would it work?”

Byakuya considered the question all the way to the door to his office. “Well, I would be surprised.”

Once they had their shoes off, Renji opened the door for them. He could smell the distinctive scent of tonkatsu, a deep fried pork cutlet, as he stepped inside. No wonder Byakuya had come to fetch him; the chef had gone all out and there was far too much food for one. Along with the pork, there was miso soup, rice, shredded cabbage, and pickled wild onions. As he sat down in his usual place, Renji said, “Looks delicious.”

“Yes,” Byakuya said without meeting Renji’s eye. “You see why I couldn’t waste it.”

Renji knew it was meant as a kind of apology, but it was weak. Still, the spread looked tasty. Maybe he could agree to a truce—at least until after everything was eaten. 

Byakuya said grace. Renji started divvying things up as Byakuya poured tea. It was almost homey.

Determined not to ruin things until he got food in, Renji kept his mouth shut—except to shovel in another mouthful. He could feel Byakuya’s gaze on him, cool and curious.

“You went off to think,” Byakuya said around a nibble of rice. “Did you decide anything?”

Renji chewed his pork, considering if he’d eaten enough to be honest. He slurped some soup and then said, “Kind of. I think maybe I ought to let you slam my face in the dirt during our sparring session.”

Byakuya set his chopsticks in their holder. “ _Let_ me?”

“Aw don’t get like that,” Renji said, seeing how Byakuya’s eyebrows arched with pride. “I’d fight you fair. You think Zabimaru would ever hold back against Senbonzakura? They’ve been after a rematch since forever.”

“Very well,” Byakuya said, skeptically. “We will fight. I thought we’d already decided to do so. Why did you need to think about this?”

Renji snagged the last of the pickles. He glanced at Byakuya to try to read his expression, but there weren’t many clues. “Because we’re going to go back to all that spanking stuff at some point here, and I don’t want that to become all about putting me in my place. You need to push me down, fine. I just want it to be up-front, not all sideways that ends up wrecking a good fuck.”

The words had come out naturally enough, casual, but Byakuya was so silent in their wake that Renji thought maybe Byakuya’d stopped breathing. All of a sudden, Byakuya was doing that thing, too, where his eyes were on his plate and his face was empty.

Renji ate while he waited for Byakuya to respond, because why not. Anyway, he figured he might need the fuel if things got ugly fast. 

“I don’t think I much care for the person I am in your mind, Renji Abarai,” Byakuya said evenly, without looking up. Only an idiot couldn’t hear the pain in his question: “Do you truly imagine me this way?”

Even though touching was always tricky, Renji reached out a hand to squeeze Byakuya’s thigh. Muscles stiffened under Renji’s touch, but Renji let his hand rest there. “No, babe, I don’t—not all the time, not even most of the time. I love you. But you know this happens to us. It happens to us so much. I fuck up, and you get it in your head you need to punish me. What I’m saying is, I don’t care if you do. Go for it. I’m game. But, this time I want a clear line. I want the punishment as punishment and the spanking as a fun extracurricular thing, not all mixed up together, okay?”

When Byakuya looked up, his eyes were raw, vulnerable. “You want me to… hit you? You want me to strike you when you step out of line?”

With another sympathetic squeeze of Byakuya’s thigh, Renji said, “Kind of? But don’t go thinking what I’m looking for is for you to take me out in the courtyard and beat me with a stick. I won’t be your dog to whip. I’m saying: let’s work things out man-to-man, with a serious bash-up.”

Byakuya focused for a long time on Renji’s hand on his leg. Several beats passed where Renji had no idea what went through Byakuya’s mind. But, he could feel something in Byakuya’s reiatsu… breathe, relax. Quietly, Byakuya muttered. “’Man-to-man.’” He shook his head as if in despair. “Isn’t that… barbaric?”

Renji patted Byakuya’s thigh as he let go, and smiled. “Probably.”

“It’s very clear you were trained by the Kenpachi,” Byakuya said with a little sniff, but Renji noticed a ghost of a smile flit over his lips. But, then his brows drew together in a frown. “A fight as punishment, though…”

“—Is better than sex as punishment,” Renji interrupted. As he let that sink in, he finally removed his hand to top up Byakuya’s tea bowl. “This is going to be ironic coming from me, but I think this is an issue of class.”

Byakuya had been lifting the filled tea bowl to his lips, but stopped, confused. “Class? How so?”

“Maybe I’m wrong, but, just guessing from you, I’m thinking being a gentleman is something to do with restraint. You want to give me a smack upside the head when I’m being a dope, but you don’t because—well, I don’t actually know why, but I remember Ukitake stopping you from slapping me once. Where I grew up, on the street, getting hit like that—when you’re being stupid—it’s just a thing that happens. It rolls off. It don’t mean nothing.”

“Your use of double negatives confuses me, Renji,” Byakuya said. “But I fail to grasp your point at any rate. Just because something is ‘a thing’ doesn’t make it right.”

“Yeah, no, let me try to explain. I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about what I’m saying, but I’m trying to say something important here.” Renji’s hands found things to tidy as he tried to organize his thoughts. “A physical fight over differences, that’s a thing that’s always been part of my life. Sometimes the guy is stronger than you, so you got to take your lumps, but the fight itself ain’t uneven, because you’re standing up for yourself, you understand?”

Byakuya clearly didn’t, not entirely, but he seemed to be trying.

Renji let out a frustrated breath. “It’s my culture, okay? You hit; you get hit. You use stuff like that to work out the pecking order, but it’s all, just, I don’t know, background noise.” 

Byakuya picked up his tea and drank several long sips. “I can fight you with this in mind, though you may have only succeeded in making me more tentative,” he said finally. “Because, hitting someone simply because I disagree with them is… well, it is something about which I must remain constantly vigilant. I’m already dangerously close to becoming my grandfather.”

Grandpa again. He seemed to come up a lot whenever they talked about this kind of thorny subject. If Renji could go back in time, he’d have a lot to say to Ginrei Kuchiki and most of it would be ‘Fucking leave Byakuya alone, you dickhead. Your sicko idea of correction is fucking him up deeper.’

But, now Renji and Byakuya were at an impasse again. If Byakuya wouldn’t work out his control issues with a smack upside the head, was it all going just continue to sublimate into bedroom activities in the not-fun way?

“Well,” Renji said with a shrug. Finding a last morsel of shredded cabbage, he popped it in his mouth. Then he stacked that bowl on top of the others. “Maybe the sparring will work, after all.”

If all this talk hasn’t ruined things, hissed Zabimaru

Renji stood up. “You ready?”

Byakuya nodded, though he said, “I suppose.”

#

Byakuya was surprised when they flash stepped toward Sokyoku Hill. The jutting rock formation was still scarred from recent battles and the destruction of the execution grounds. A desolate wind howled and tugged at haori and hair. Senbonzakura’s song shifted warily, the scene of their first and only defeat nearby. Certainly this space was large enough to accommodate Hihio Zabimaru, but it was hardly private. All of the Seireitei would be able to see them fighting here. Given how fraught this whole thing had suddenly become after their conversation, Byakuya wasn’t entirely sure this was a good idea. “Renji—“

Byakuya lost his train of thought when Renji showed him to a cave in the side of the hill.

“What’s this?” Byakuya asked, coming over to look.

“Check it out, Urahara’s secret training ground. Zabimaru sniffed the place out. This is where we learned bankai.”

“Indeed?” Byakuya glanced over Renji’s shoulder as Renji worked open some kind of hidden doorway. A blast of summer-warm air huffed out when the door worked free. Somehow there was sunshine as well.

Renji jumped in unhesitatingly; Byakuya followed more tentatively, forming steps of his own reiatsu. He started to close the trapdoor behind them, but stopped, wondering how else they would find their way out without a peek of the Seireitei beyond the false sky of the training grounds.

It was a strange landscape--alien, but familiar somehow. Bronze sandstone cliffs, bright, unblinking sun, and shifting sand, it was like a positive to Hueco Mundo’s negative.

Having found a wide, open spot, Renji seemed to be preparing himself for battle with stretches that made him look like a sensuous, red-haired cat. Byakuya turned away, ostensibly to get the lay of the landscape, but, in truth, it was because he needed something besides Renji’s body on which to focus.

It would be difficult to give Renji what he seemed to desire. Having listened very carefully, Byakuya determined that what Renji wanted from this spar was some kind of impassioned dust-up, a fight that would, somehow, be a stand-in for…

…sexual punishment?

Honestly, this was the point at which Renji’d lost him. 

But, it hardly mattered. The problem was that Senbonzakura was not a weapon to be used with raging passion. Unlike Zabimaru, Senbonzakura was no demon; they were an instrument of precision, control, and concentration. Byakuya’s shikai was not a weapon built for bashing sense into someone—or whatever it was Renji was used to under the tutelage of that barbarian at the Eleventh.

Yet, Renji had been so intense in the need to articulate this ‘solution.’ Thus, Byakuya refused to dismiss the idea out of hand. Perhaps, if they kept shikai out of things for awhile? Turning his head slightly to speak over his shoulder, Byakuya said, "If you truly wish this to be a 'fight', it may be preferable to restrict ourselves to blades only."

Renji paused for a second before dipping into a deep stretch, saying, "No shikai or bankai, got it." He glanced up, eyes fervent in the odd underground light. "That means no kido either, right?"

Byakuya dipped his chin in agreement. He'd already decided to forbear on using kidō since that would bring the bout to a far too speedy conclusion. Neither of them suggested refraining from shunpo, since it was far too deeply embedded in their training.

He was starting to get ready himself when Renji made another request, one that completely blind-sided him.

"Take off the haori, will you?"

About to draw his sword, Byakuya's fingers faltered on the hilt and he looked at Renji askance. Standing with his arms folded and chin set almost mulishly, Renji added, "I want to fight you, not my captain."

Was this another one of Renji's blurred lines? Byakuya had to agree that the white captain's haori represented a tangible difference between them, and one that probably had no place in this particular encounter, thus he saw no reason to refuse the request. He was almost tempted to require Renji to pay for the concession by taking out his hair tie, except that would simply serve as a further distraction.

Sweeping off both haori and scarf, Byakuya lay them over his arm and said, "We have no shinpan, no referee. How will the match be decided?"

Renji shrugged, "At the Eleventh, it was always the last man standing."

"Admirable, I'm sure, but hardly practical when we have a division to run this afternoon." Byakuya frowned as he spoke. Renji's cheeks were flushed and his gaze kept drifting to Byakuya's now bared neck. Removing the scarf was clearly as much a distraction for Renji as loosened hair would be for Byakuya.

Which made the solution to the problem obvious, if somewhat nostalgic. There had been something about this place that reminded Byakuya of Yoruichi, though he couldn’t say exactly what it was. "Then we each shall steal something from the other," Byakuya said, deftly replacing the scarf and earning himself a slightly disgruntled but much clearer-eyed look. "I shall acquire your hair tie while you attempt to remove my scarf. The first to strip the other, as it were, is the winner."

Rather than wait for a reply, he shunpo'd to a nearby rock to leave his haori somewhere it wouldn't get destroyed this time. By the time he returned, Renji's grin bordered on wolfish and when he drew Zabimaru, the sword sang from its sheath with the hiss of steel. 

Ah, so, the time for words was over.

Despite being ready for it, Byakuya almost missed Renji's first attack. Fast and vicious, it came slamming down out of a shunpo-powered leap. Instinct made Byakuya deflect rather than try to block the blow entirely. As their blades slid apart, pain radiated up through his fingers from the impact and in his mind, Senbonzakura's voices rose to an incredulous note at the pure power they had just witnessed.

Again and without a moment’s hesitation, Renji came in fast and hard, two-handed for extra control, and this time Byakuya had no choice but to use a step of shunpo to avoid the weight of it.

Where had all this extra power come from? 

There was so much more now than there had been the last fateful time he and Renji had crossed blades. But, that had been barely hours after Renji had achieved bankai, and he'd had a chance to practice since then. Long days of it, Byakuya remembered as he parried Zabimaru's blows and finally managed an attack of his own. It was brushed aside like a troublesome bug and it took every ounce of Byakuya's self-control not to lash out with kidō as he would in a real battle.

In his moment of distraction, hot fingers brushed against his neck. Byakuya ducked away from the touch, wheeling and reaching out himself, feeling coarse hair tear from his grasp as Renji flash-stepped to escape. Renji stopped a short distance away. He crouched atop a nearby rock, grin even wilder than before. Renji’s body language radiated an arrogant, animalistic poise that haunted Byakuya's darkest, most secret dreams. 

For the briefest second, Byakuya was back, trapped in his room with an insatiable demon determined to take its pound of flesh.

Fear flooded Byakuya's system. A need to put the demon down almost overwhelmed rational thought. Kidō sputtered at his fingertips. Only the sudden, decidedly human skitter of confusion across Renji's face stayed the spell, allowing it to be trapped in a clenched fist.

"You okay?" Renji called out, all semblance to the demon falling away as he rose to his feet, expression concerned.

Byakuya lifted his chin and his zanpakutō, the stab fear gone as quickly as it had risen. "Of course. Why wouldn't I be?"

"You looked, I don’t know, spooked for a second."

Was he so easy to read? Not for anyone but Renji, Byakuya was sure, and yet Renji read him with such accuracy that it was disconcerting at times. Like having his innermost soul stripped bare. All those parts he had taken such pains to bury, deep and secure behind numerous defenses, until along came this man, this reborn stray from Inuzuri, who saw past all of them and tore right into the heart of him in such a way that, at times, Byakuya felt he had nowhere left to hide.

Nowhere, except behind the high walls of his birthright and rank, which he used to push Renji down and away, every time he came too close.

The tip of Senbonzakura's blade dipped slightly. The excuse to push down and to push away was always Renji’s demon and Byakuya’s own deep-seated fear that Renji had far less control of it than he claimed. Byakuya had always been determined, since that night, that if Renji had no control, then he must control the demon for him. But, the demon had never truly come back, only the ghost of it. No matter how much Byakuya mistreated Renji, the demon had never bared its fangs… snarled and spit, perhaps, but nothing, ever like that night.

No, the true demon was Byakuya’s own fear.

Fear of closeness, fear of failure… fear of passion. Fear that grandfather was right about him, that he could never be good or correct enough, that no one could ever be proud of someone as broken and difficult as himself.

“Byakuya?” 

Renji stood, his stance wide open, unguarded. Just like his words. It had just been ‘Byakuya,’ not Taicho or even ‘Babe.’ No false distance between them at all, no ‘respect’ or deference, no humbling or elevation. It was terrifying, really, how intimate and straightforward it was. 

Utterly terrifying, like the feeling of free fall.

Exhilarating, too.

Shaking himself out mentally, Byakuya raised Senbonzakura again. “Come at me with all you have,” he said. _Fear sharpens my senses, but I’m not afraid._

**Author's Note:**

> Josey gets credit for the action and the initial emotional thrust of the actual sparring session (as well as coming up with the idea of a "strip spar.") So, kudos go to her for that. Also, the spelling--anything that's right is down to her, the rest is my fault.


End file.
